Containerised audio and video tools grant full flexibility
After a positive reception at IBC2026, Bridge Technologies this week officially announce their participation in the Media eXchange Layer (MXL) initiative, demonstrating how this has supported the containerisation of Bridge’s full range of audio and video scopes. As a result, these tools can now be accessed through systems such as Grass Valley’s MXL-native AMPP OS – an open, cloud-native, microservice-based operating system and virtualised media production platform – allowing users to access a range of cross-vendor, on-demand production tools.
AMPP utilises MXL as an underlying transport layer to enable low-latency interoperability. Developed in collaboration with EBU, the Linux Foundation, NABA and some of the largest technology providers in the broadcast market, MXL is a vendor-neutral, open-source layer for IP-native, software-defined media production. By ingressing content once and allowing it to be accessed via shared memory across multiple containerised processes, it allows vendors and applications to utilise the same media stream in parallel, thus streamlining operations.
In full support of this initiative, Bridge have leveraged the potential of MXL by containerising a number of components from their suite of production tools, repackaging and delivering intuitive video and audio monitoring scopes. These scopes can run independent of underlying hardware, and when combined with the ability of MXL to reduce reliance on constant network read/write cycles for content, this approach dramatically cuts latency, network overhead, and infrastructure cost, enabling smarter workflows.
This latest MXL-driven containerisation advancement makes the audio and video scope features available on a case-by-case basis, allowing broadcasters to temporarily ‘spin up’ the scopes as a microservice and monitor users’ on-demand fluctuations such as during annual global sporting events.
More than just a technological milestone, Bridge Technologies sees these developments as part of a broader philosophy of collaboration over competition: a belief that open ecosystems, shared standards and collective innovation represent the best path forward for the industry.
“Bridge Technologies’ work with MXL is a good example of how an open approach can bring third-party applications into software-based media workflows. With AMPP OS now MXL-native, Bridge’s containerised monitoring tools can be accessed within the AMPP environment, giving users greater flexibility in how and when they deploy these capabilities. It also demonstrates the value of bringing technology partners together around a common approach to media exchange,” said Matt Yates, Director of Strategic Alliances, Grass Valley.
Speaking of the announcement, Chairman Simen Frostad said: “The software we create has always been capable of far more – it just needed the right architecture to unlock that potential at scale without introducing configuration complexities. MXL and containerisation provide exactly that: a flexible, efficient way to run our best-in-class scopes across larger, more dynamic production environments, without the overhead of dedicated hardware deployments”.
He concluded: “And we’re particularly proud that this is being done through open standards and shared innovation. That’s always been central to how Bridge operates – we’ve never believed in locking others out to secure our own position. We’ve always held that industry progress enables individual success, not the other way around. The MXL project is a natural expression of that philosophy: building better tools and sharing them with the entire industry”.
More information about Bridge Technologies and its products is available at www.bridgetech.tv or by phone at +47 22 38 51 00.